


the sorrow from off my skin (how to be whole again)

by Runespoor



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Unreliable Narrator, bring your own subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: Rue picks up her pieces.
Relationships: Ahiru | Duck & Rue (Princess Tutu), Mytho/Rue (Princess Tutu)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	the sorrow from off my skin (how to be whole again)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HandmaidenOfHorror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandmaidenOfHorror/gifts).

> Title paraphrased from Linkin Park's Castle of Glass.

“Fakir tells me he and Ahiru have found a way around Ahiru’s curse,” Mytho tells Rue one morning over breakfast, reading over Fakir’s last letter. "So to speak."

Rue, who is struggling to spread cranberry jam in a uniform layer over her slice of sourdough bread without staining the tablecloth, and is acutely aware of the servant’s disapproving gaze, cannot help the slight waspishness of her tone. “Really? Well, that was faster than I expected.”

She immediately wishes she hadn’t; the pettiness doesn’t fit the topic. 

Mytho, who is too good for any world and currently still reading his mail to boot, doesn’t bat an eye at either Rue’s tone or her subsequent lip-biting. Her snideness didn’t go completely unnoticed - out of the corner of her eye, she can see the servant’s eyebrows jump up, then his brow furrow. 

Does he even know who Mytho is talking about? It’s just as likely he’s judging on instinct, based on his antipathy against Rue. The castle’s servants don’t give Rue much of the benefit of the doubt. Nor do the rest of Mytho’s people that she’s met. She doesn’t blame them, to be honest, but it does add to mealtimes with Mytho a spice she could do without.

She puts the jam spoon back down. “What else does he say? How is Ahiru?”

“She’s well, and he’s over the moon,” Mytho says, eyes scanning the rest of the letter. Rue idly wonders how much reading between the lines he’s engaging in, or if Fakir is just honest regarding how he feels in writing. “Oh, she’s asking if she can visit soon. That’s a lovely idea, wouldn’t you say, Rue?”

“Very,” she allows. She takes up the spoon again to spread some jam - her previous effort left a corner of the slice uncovered, and now its bareness mocks her. It also gives her something to do with her hands. “Will Fakir accompany her?”

Should she prepare herself for accommodating Fakir’s possessiveness and odd moods, is what she means, although with Ahiru around, he might not be so bad. And it would be pleasant to have someone else the common people would take an instant dislike to, as well. She wouldn’t mind lording her meager knowledge of Mytho’s land over his total ignorance.

Mytho turns the pages, checks the first page again. A tiny frown tugs his eyebrows, and he shakes his head. 

“I don’t think so, not this time. He writes he’ll need to remain outside to write a portal between our worlds, whatever that means… I hope this doesn’t mean he’s never planning on visiting,” Mytho adds. He’s still frowning a little.

“May I?” Rue extends her hand without waiting for an answer.

Mytho acquiesces and hands her over the letter. Fakir’s handwriting hasn’t improved, but over the years she’s built up some familiarity with it. 

She scans the letter quickly, not wanting to be indiscreet, but sometimes her eye snags on a bit of a description, a turn of phrase she wouldn’t have expected from him, graceful and lyrical - though perhaps she should have; Fakir’s always loved theatrics. There’s a sense of relief and vibrant joy strumming through every word in the letter that pierces Rue’s heart. Hope answered, but not consumed. 

“It doesn’t sound like he’s planning on never visiting. There,” she folds the letter to show Mytho, “he writes he’s hoping Ahiru can give him more precise descriptions--”, a foolish notion, if you asked Rue, “--so he’ll have a better idea what to expect. He says ‘next time’ in the next paragraph,” she adds helpfully.

“So he does! Good, that’s good then.” Mytho smiles at the servant who sidled up to him to refill his cup of tea. “What does he mean with precise descriptions, though… Do you think what I told him about our world wasn’t good?”

Rue doesn’t doubt for one second it wasn’t. Mytho inevitably leaves out a key feature of the landscape, be it deep scars torn in hillsides by dragon claws, laugh-inducing pollens from the garden’s bushes, or how the door to Rue’s linen cupboard turns into a secret passage after nightfall, leading to a faraway region of Mytho’s land.

“Fakir doesn’t think anything is ever good enough.” Rue catches the servant’s eye just as they lower the teapot, and raises her empty cup slightly. The servant’s hand isn’t as steady pouring her a cup as with Mytho, though the pot is lighter now. But nothing is spilled. Rue nods a thank you that has the servant back away, and swallows a sigh behind the rim of her teacup.

Mytho chuckles, and Rue casts him a quizzical look. “It’s nothing,” he says, a smile playing on his lips. “I just… find you funny.”

“Oh,” she says, and can’t find the rest of her words. The steam rising from her teacup flushes her cheeks.

“I’ll write back that we’re looking forward to having her here. Two days should be enough to prepare her affairs and ready a room,” Mytho decides.

Two days is very short, in term of what needs doing, and very long, when counted in how many times she’ll breathe before seeing Ahiru again, and Rue’s surprised to realize how much she must miss Ahiru.

She takes a breath and faces the day.

They use the passageway in Rue’s linen cupboard to Crystal Tear Lake, which is the easiest place to open a portal. 

It makes sense to Rue; when Mytho and she entered the fairytale book, they were near Crystal Tear Lake, and when Mytho left the fairytale book during his combat against the Raven, they were fighting by Crystal Tear Lake as well.

Much of Mytho is linked to the Lake, and Mytho shows her, as they wait for Ahiru, all the parts of his story that don’t fit in the castle: the blue-tiled cabin near the crystal-silent lake where he’d spent his first years, the long-stemmed whispering poppies where he used to lie down, the pearly tooth-shaped pebbles he’d collect to fit them into a crown, and, few and far between, stolen visits from his father the king, cloaked in night and crowned in longing. 

There Rue learns about his mother, the witch, and her raven familiar, and there she understands why the castle servants look upon her with distrust, a strange, pretty girl whom their prince carried home and calls his queen.

That Mytho grew in a place his fairytale land thinks a place of magic doesn’t come as a surprise; it seems only fitting that even among his people Mytho would stand out, like a child crafted out of stars.

Ahiru stumbles out of the sky and into their arms with a peal of laughter, and they tumble over in a pile of knees and muffled protests. The knees are Ahiru’s; the protests are Rue’s; Mytho, first back on his feet, helps them both up.

Ahiru rubs the back of her head with an embarrassed giggle while Rue scolds her, but Rue’s heart isn’t in it.

The lantern Mytho holds up casts a golden glow on Ahiru, like a dream Rue made up on her own. Something Rue never thought to see in this world. Yet she’s still the same, skinny arms, freckles, each flutter of her eyelashes magnified by the shadows the light casts. The lantern’s light catches in strands of her hair, burnishing them, the silly cowlick that always refuses to lie flat a flaming wick on Ahiru’s short head.

Her eyes are still huge and her wide mouth is pulled in a grin that makes her look stunned. As though she didn’t know she was supposed to meet them!

She keeps sneaking glances at Ahiru while Mytho leads them back to the passageway to the castle. After the second time Ahiru slips on the wet earth by the lake, Rue suggests Ahiru changes back into a duck, so they can carry her without anyone risking an injury. 

They make it back to the castle smoothly afterwards. Rue carries Ahiru while Mytho lights the way, and as a duck, Ahiru is small and lighter still than Rue’d expect; she suspects magic. They have Ahiru’s things in bags slung across their shoulders - that gets in the way some, but they’re dancers, and they know how to keep their balance.

They slip out of the passageway with hours to spare before dawn turns the cupboard back; a well-conducted retrieval. Mytho puts the lantern out as Rue tells Ahiru she’ll show her to her room, and that’s when they both realize the small duck has fallen asleep in Rue’s arms.

Rue shrugs. “Well, she can sleep as a duck in my room tonight.”

“That’s a good idea,” Mytho agrees. “She might be confused if she woke up in an unknown place on her own.”

Looking around, Rue spots a round, fluffy pillow gifted to her by one of the first nobles to visit the returning prince. The fabric is embroidered with a gorgeous burst of multicolored flowers, among which rests a graceful, golden cage, in which a small bird is perched. The door to the cage is shown unlocked, and the bird looks like an ill-shapen crow, or maybe a magpie. All in all it’s obvious the gift is supposed to mean something. Rue’s equally certain she wouldn’t care for the meaning, and so she’s consigned the pillow to an armchair instead of showing it off on her bed, but she has to admit it’s convenient for the purpose of giving duck Ahiru a mattress on which to spend the night.

Mytho procures a folded handkerchief from Rue’s vanity as a makeshift blanket. Once they’re done fussing over the duck, she looks exactly like the favoured magical animal companion of a fairytale prince or princess, sleeping peacefully on a velvet pillow by Rue’s side.

“Going from one world to another must have exhausted her,” Mytho murmurs. “She’ll sleep till morning.”

Rue nods in agreement: when Rue did the trip herself, she slept for a whole day afterward, and only woke up when Mytho called her, gently, to feed her some light soup.

He clears his throat, and Rue looks up, waiting for him to continue. “I’ll be away for a short while. When we were at the lake, I could feel something in the air.”

“More curses?” 

“Maybe. Not at the lake - Crystal Tear abides no magic but my own. But it felt like the land around doesn’t think I’ve completely returned.”

Rue nods; she’s been here long enough that Mytho doesn’t need to repeat his explanations. 

The region around the capital is tamed now: it’s the heart of the kingdom, the place where the prince lives. The evil remnants left behind by the Raven - by curses prepared by Siegfried’s mother, perhaps - are long gone, dissipated in Siegfried’s presence like so many bad dreams. The further away from the prince’s castle, the further the prince’s return may pass as an odd, hopeful, untrue rumor, and the more such places are still haunted by long-ago curses. Only Mytho going there will dispel them and pacify the land.

“I’ll apologize on your behalf,” Rue says. “You’ll write, so we can hear from you, and know how long you’ll be away.”

Mytho smiles, and takes her hand. “You are a gift among women,” he murmurs, eyes such soft honey that she could get stuck there and drown in them.

She hasn’t yet taken off the scarf she was wearing as they waited for Ahiru outside; this is the only reason her cheeks feel so warm.

He gives her hand a little squeeze, and lets go. “Will you write, as well? I would read of your days with Ahiru.”

“I’ll write every day,” she says.

“Then I look forward to reading your words,” he says, bows, and leaves.

Rue sinks onto her bed, hands clasped over her burning face before tearing the scarf away.

Well, there’s nothing to it, is there? Mytho will be gone in the morning for his land’s sake, and Rue will be alone to entertain Ahiru. 

It will be fine, but Rue cannot smother a whiff of trepidation, treading through her confidence.

Ahiru’s stay starts with the maid charged with helping Rue dress taking one look at the bird on a pillow next to the future queen’s head and letting out a strident scream.

For a minute, it’s pure chaos: Ahiru wakes up quacking and instinctively starts flying to avoid the threat, Rue gets tangled in her sheets and almost falls over, and the maid stands stunned silent with her hands petrified over her mouth.

“Ahiru, it’s nothing,” Rue half-shouts, half-reassures, “I’m here, it’s just, ugh, we were just surprised, that’s all. Settle down.” She does her level best to imitate Mytho’s soothing delivery, and fails.

Thankfully by then Ahiru’s awake enough to have taken her bearings, and she turns back into a human. 

Naked, obviously, so she turns back into a duck, flies off behind the canopy of Rue’s bed, and turns back _again_, crouched behind the bed.

It all happens so fast Rue can do no more than blink and regret she hadn’t awoken before the maid came in.

The maid takes an audible breath; a problem for later, Rue thinks grimly. Unless an enchanted human is less suspicious than a bird familiar. In the land of tales, it might be.

“Er, hello,” Ahiru says. “My name’s Ahiru? I’m a friend of Rue and Mytho!”

“...” the maid says.

“Please prepare one of my outfits for my friend,” Rue says. “The cream-and-turquoise one should be closest to her size.”

“...Yes, milady,” the maid says.

“Thank you, Rue-chan,” Ahiru says in a little voice while the maid readies both Rue’s outfit and Ahiru’s. “Thank you, miss…”

“Ilse,” the maid answers, “but you don’t have to thank me, miss. I’m simply doing my job.” Her gaze slides to Rue, who is handing to Ahiru the bag containing her underthings.

“Well, thank you all the same, Ilse!” Ahiru’s voice comes slightly muffled, between the canopy and her twisting to slip on the bare minimum. “Hum, do the kitchens know I’m here? For breakfast? I’m starving...”

Rue opens her mouth to answer, but Ilse answers first - probably thinking the question was addressed to her. “Yes, miss, Prince Siegfried told us to prepare for a guest. I, er, I expected you in the room we’d set aside for you. Miss. I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, no need to apologize! Ha, it’s not every day you find a _duck_ sleeping in Rue-chan’s room, is it! Or, huh, I guess I’d have thought maybe that’s more normal here, what with being a fairytale and all, but you shouted, so I guess not - see, I’m the one who’s sorry, I don’t know how things work here at all! I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!”

The maid - Ilse - whom Rue has only ever known with the closed-off air of a student mid-examination, has her lips curved into the beginnings of a smile. “Think nothing of it, miss. No-one got hurt, and it was a little funny, don’t you think?”

“Ah… I guess you’re right.” Ahiru laughs feebly.

“Thank you, Ilse,” Rue cuts in, gesturing to the maid that now the outfits are prepared, they can manage without her help. It’s not new; Rue hasn’t liked letting other people dress her up or do her hair since the Raven. 

Immediately, the maid’s face resumes her stony expression. “Milady,” she intones.

Rue waits until the maid has left the room to resume the conversation. “After breakfast, is there anything you want to do?”

“Visit the castle!” Ahiru calls out. “Can we go to the library?”

Rue feels her eyebrows arch. Maybe Ahiru wants to tell Fakir about it? That’s as likely as Ahiru being a bookworm and Rue never knowing. Despite Ahiru’s insistence, their friendship was quicksilver at best.

“Of course,” she replies. “You’ll like it.”

Even Rue, who has no particular interest in libraries, is fond of Mytho’s. Ahiru, who’s been spending so much time with Fakir, is bound to just love it.

A good choice of a first spot to visit, after all.

The royal castle boasts a large collection of leatherbound volumes, more than Rue can imagine anyone reading in their entire life, divided into several rooms, each with their own theme, shape, list of books in a wide, yellowed register, and at least one table and a place to sit. 

Each has its own feel, and though for most of them Rue hasn’t done more than just walk through them, she can introduce them: the history room with its larger table, so more books can be taken out and studied at the same time; the cluster of literature rooms, each for a genre or an origin - Rue’s not sure - most of them barely wider than alcoves and their armchairs delightfully cosy, none of them the same color; the theater room with its wide open space by one side, in case you wanted to act out a part in a play. 

Ahiru “oh”s and “ah”s in a way that would tickle any proprietor’s pride, though her voice generally hits the precise note that makes it reverberate all throughout the room. 

“It’s no bother,” Rue reminds Ahiru every time. “It’s Mytho’s library. We can be as noisy as we like.”

Over breakfast, she’s told Ahiru Mytho had to leave, and had to be frustratingly open about the fact she doesn’t know how long it will last. Ahiru is disappointed, but she doesn’t seem to resent Rue for it. (Of course she doesn’t; she’s Ahiru. But people who don’t begrudge Rue’s presence are a rarity these days.) 

“Y-yes!” Ahiru squeaks. She still winces when they cross paths with a servant dusting the shelves for the second time.

“There are so many books,” Ahiru marvels. “Do you think Mytho has read them all?”

“I don’t think anyone could read them all,” Rue retorts. “Though if anyone could, it would be a character in a fairytale… But Mytho hasn’t.” He’s spoken of a few romances he’d like to read but hasn’t found the time yet, and they settled on one to read aloud together - ‘that way we’ll discover something good together,’ as Mytho had put it.

The servant can’t suppress a disapproving twitch, and Rue feels her smile flake into forced politeness. They like it better when she calls him Siegfried.

“Are there any books about magic?” 

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the servant - who has been dusting the same shelves for five minutes now - pause as well. She ignores him. Aside from when she’s directly giving them an order, in which case she’s unfailingly, smilingly polite, she’s found it’s better not to interact with them. They don’t quite recoil, but whenever she approaches one on her own, she can see dread shadowing their eyes. 

She nods. “This way.”

They pass through the natural science and astronomy rooms; Ahiru cranes her neck to look at the solar system mobile hung in the latter, then almost trips over the reproduction of a miniature planet whose orbit rotates on a different axis from the others. Rue doesn’t look up, habit having taught her that looking at the moving planets and the swirling splash of colors on their surface gives her nausea. The room is one of the most beautiful in the castle, so she allows Ahiru a few moments.

Finally, when Ahiru breaks out of her amazement, she fishes a key out of her pocket and gestures Ahiru behind a shelf. There, in the shadow of the planets, almost unnoticeable unless you know what to look for, is a door that Rue unlocks.

She can feel Ahiru’s surprise. None of the other rooms have locks, and all of the doors so far were open. 

“Most magic books are dangerous, so Mytho’s isolated them,” she explains, opening the door to reveal a short spiral staircase and starting to climb.

“Then… is it okay for me to be there?”

Rue snorts. She can’t see Ahiru, climbing the stairs behind her, but she can imagine the knotted eyebrows, the anxious air. “You’re Mytho’s friend. Of course you’re welcome here.”

She emphasizes her meaning by stepping aside to let Ahiru go before her.

If Rue was asked, she’d call the room tastefully understated, all arched, airy ceilings, and clear stained glass windows. Few servants are vetted to enter it even to clean, for fear of catching a curse, and as such Mytho has opted to make it as simple to clean as possible.

The books Rue left lying on the working table are all there, along with Mytho’s scribbles over a sketch of Crystal Tear Lake. 

“Wow,” Ahiru says, advancing to stand in the middle of the room. “There are so many! Say, are there any about Princess Tutu?”

Rue looks away from scowling at an indecipherable scrawl Mytho left in a margin of her own notes. All useless now: she’s learned more in one evening yesterday than she did in all her attempts to learn through books.

“I’m not sure, I don’t think so. Are you looking for anything specific?”

Ahiru gives a sigh so deep as to make Rue’s chest ache in sympathy.

“No, I’m just... hoping to find out anything more about her, and I thought, all we know about her in the real world comes through Drosselmeyer, but she’s a fairytale character, so maybe in the land of fairytales I could find out more.”

Rue is no expert on fairytale logic, for all that she recently started living in one. She tells Ahiru so, with a shrug expressing both her cluelessness and her willingness to help.

“We can look,” Rue says.

In the end, they come up short. 

It might not mean there’s nothing to be found; the classifying system in the magic room feels deliberately abstruse. After his parents passed away, Mytho took all of his mother’s tomes and locked them up here, where they couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. 

He didn’t intend on letting anyone else read them, and so he didn’t need to make his mother’s system any more accessible. At the time - he said - advisors begged him to get rid of the magic, but the forbidden knowledge turned out to contain the solution to Mytho’s struggle against the Raven. Dangerous magic’s earned a place, of a sort, in the kingdom, when wielded by Prince Siegfried.

“Perhaps Mytho will have more luck.” Rue tries to make Ahiru feel better.

The forlorn look on Ahiru’s face fills Rue with yearning. Ahiru is no witch or scholar of magic, no wise prince combing through his mother’s tomes - and Rue is barely better. If she’d applied herself more diligently - if she hadn’t relied so much on Mytho’s guidance through the shelves. If she were the witch rumor thinks she is. 

If she’s not, at least she can try to distract Ahiru.

“Let me show you the dance studio,” Rue says.

The prince’s castle has a ballroom; of course it does. Until Rue came, however, it didn’t have a dance studio. 

But Mytho didn’t want her to be homesick, and dancing together was always one of their favorite things, and so he had an unused parlor repurposed. 

Ghosts of old stains on the wooden floor are witness to the room’s true age, but aside from the floor, the rest of it is new; the mirror covering one entire wall was made to order, zealously delivered by artisans from the capital delighted to be of service to their prince, and the barre is so smooth and cool under Rue’s fingers that she could think it sculpted by fairies. 

The room isn’t huge, and she’s not sure when it was last used or by whom, but it brings such feelings of familiarity mixed with unthreatening strangeness to Rue that it is her favourite place in the entire castle. 

When Rue is en pointe, nothing can catch her off-guard.

Usually, Rue dances on her own. Mytho’s been kept busy since they returned, and though the studio is equipped with a piano, and she has on occasion requested a servant play for her, mostly she does without. Exercises at the barre don’t typically demand much in the way of accompaniment.

Today, though, with Ahiru, deserves better. Rue knows this but can’t bring herself to let another person intrude. 

Her dancing outfit is where she left it, folded on the piano stool; no-one enters this room if they can avoid it. The staff knows it to be as much hers as a lady’s boudoir. 

Rue and Ahiru change into dancing outfits - they made a detour by Ahiru’s room to get her leotard and dance slippers - and start stretching.

Every time, it’s an awakening after a hundred years of sleep, body fresher, alert, both tighter and looser than on the street - drowsiness vanished with a flurry. Sleeping Beauty waking up in time for a solo. Or like a wind-up doll, who doesn’t know the very idea of fatigue. 

Ahiru keeps glancing at her through the entire series of développés Rue imposes, as if to check she’s not making some egregious mistake. 

“You’re doing fine, Ahiru. Just relax.”

“Yes, I’m sor--wait, what?”

“You’re fine,” Rue repeats. “Here, let’s try this.”

She approaches Ahiru en pointe - arabesque - and extends her hand toward her. Ahiru looks at her with the wide eyes of a cornered duck.

“Dance with me, Ahiru.”

At this, Ahiru’s eyes go impossibly wider, and Rue can’t keep the smile off her face.

Ahiru hesitates a second, but when she lets go of the barre and reaches for Rue, her hand is steady, reluctance evaporated into a shine of ebullience. Anticipation sparkles in her eyes.

A titter escapes Rue’s lips, light and feathery as Ahiru’s duck shape, and she smiles a conspirator’s smile at Ahiru.

“We’ll just imagine the music, if that’s alright with you.” She is not going to hunt down a servant.

They find each other’s rhythm disarmingly fast. 

Maybe Rue’s silly to be surprised. Hasn’t she already danced a pas de deux with Ahiru? She danced a pas de deux with Ahiru when she thought Ahiru the least graceful girl in the intermediate class, who looked upon her with adoration - before even Ahiru decided they were friends. And then again as Kraehe and Tutu, bravura duels. 

She knows how to dance with her; she knows how to tilt her, how to carry her, how to help her into an arabesque. 

It is no discovery; it is a renewal. 

Dancing with Ahiru again is a reunion with a familiar stranger, through mists parting. Rue breathes the sensation deeply in her lungs: the yearly mantle of autumn nights trailing in velvety whispers closer to its afternoons, the smell of an long-ago recipe prepared by a new cook. 

Rue’s in no hurry to stop, but after a while a pause becomes necessary, so they can drink some water and breathe at rest.

“Hey, Ahiru,” Rue asks, between two swallows. “Why are you here?” To her own ears, her voice sounds curious and a bit out of breath, though not enough to erase the rudeness of the question. “I’m glad to have you. I didn’t expect you’d want to come so soon after turning back.” 

She wants to ask about Fakir, but she’s been brutal and ungracious enough that she doesn’t.

“I want to learn about Princess Tutu. I feel I have to? Fakir’s been learning lots of stuff, about writing, and about Drosselmeyer, and he chose not to do the same, but learning, it helped him. I want… I want to do the same for me.”

Rue’s grip on her water bottle tightens.“Is Tutu the only reason?”

She sounds like a bruise. She sounds like her feet make her feel after dancing Giselle for three hours.

Ahiru chews on her lip. “That’s not right. I’ve felt like, I come from Princess Tutu? I was Princess Tutu, but… who was she before I was her? Who am I? And…”

She huffs.

“And you’re my friend, Rue-chan, you and Mytho both are, so I thought if I wanted to become better at being _me_, I should come and see you. I missed you.”

Some water must have dripped on the bottle Rue’s drinking from somehow and made it slippery; she makes a wrong move and the bottle slips from her hand, and falls on the ground.

“It’s nothing,” Rue says off Ahiru’s concerned look, crouching to pick it up. She drank enough that it didn’t spill, so there’s that. “I think I might just be a little tired, that’s all.”

“Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep,” Ahiru suggests, “since you came to pick me up and all.”

Her dropping the bottle has nothing to do with fatigue or lack of sleep, but she won’t turn down a ready-made excuse.

“Hmm, maybe. Let’s stop for today,” Rue suggests.

The next days are much the same, idle companionship with Ahiru that make Rue somehow more aware of where she stands. 

Outside of half-hearted forays in the library, searching for snippets (for herself or for Fakir, it depends; rarely for Tutu, about whom Ahiru has made up her mind to leave until Mytho’s return), Ahiru treats her visit as a much-earned vacation. She wants to see everything, so Rue shows her around.

Being Ahiru’s guide to the capital is very different from walking into the city on her own, and while she’s supposed to act as a guide, Rue feels like she’s discovering the city anew herself, through Ahiru’s eyes. 

Ahiru might dart ahead or stop suddenly, but she’s been holding Rue’s hand since they came across the first street vendor by the castle gate, and her excited delight has Rue savoring the city as she never has.

And Ahiru’s smiles bring warmth to the eyes of the people around, and another smile to their lips, as well. A quality Rue and her raven locks can’t counterfeit. 

The street vendor they buy hot cocoas from uses a twig to draw a cat’s smile on the foam of Ahiru’s cocoa, pulling the whiskers into twirls. 

“Oh, how cute! Are you going to do one for Rue-chan, too, or are you drawing something else?” 

The vendor glances at Rue and Rue bites her lip, not wanting to tell Ahiru the woman doesn’t want to draw her a cute picture, and she will not beg or force. 

Yet the woman starts rearranging the foam, all the same. It’s lucky Ahiru only uses her powers for good.

Oblivious to the wordless tension, Ahiru stares at the emerging drawing, and Rue finds herself intrigued as well, raising her chin so she’ll have a better look. There’s a spike, and a curve, and another spike...

“Is it… a butterfly?”

It’s a crown. Rue can guess - the sketch’s advanced enough that she can tell it’s not a crow, her first thought. Far better than a vial of poison, or a spinning wheel; a queen’s symbol, rather than a witch. And so it might mean that this woman, subject of Siegfried, is accepting her somewhat. Before she came here, Rue had only performed royalty for hours at a time, learning it as she did the steps of a ballet, and then putting it away as she did her ballet shoes. She wore crowns then, glittery constructs of felt and paper pinned to her dancer’s bun; today her hair is free of ornaments, but her head feels heavy with the weight of expectations.

“Good guess, my lady!” the street vendor tells Ahiru, and Rue startles out of her reverie when her own drink is pushed between her hands. The butterfly’s wings flutter with the sloshing as she gathers her words.

Rue doesn’t miss the quirk of the vendor’s lips as she looks at Ahiru; she changed her mind mid-drawing, then? 

“It’s lovely. Thank you.” She means it to both of them, though Ahiru will not pick up on it.

The vendor gives a little bow, and she and Ahiru trail back to the small bridge they just passed. 

They walk slowly, so their drinks won’t spill, but despite the chill nipping at their fingers, the drinks are still warm when they reach the bridge. The small stone bench is empty, and the two girls huddle there, watching the stream of slate-colored water course beneath them.

“Doesn’t this bridge remind you of Golden Crown?” Ahiru asks. “The rest of the town too, but not as much.”

“Mytho says it didn’t look like this before,” Rue says, sipping her drink. “How is Golden Crown these days? Has it changed any?”

Ahiru lets out a nervous-sounding giggle. “I haven’t seen much of it, actually, what with being a duck and all… Fakir doesn’t go out much. But he did go out for groceries, and sometimes for a walk… Oh, the school is the same, but the clock tower is different. And the bridges too! Remember the place where you and Tutu danced with the ghost of the woman whose lover married someone else? It’s a construction site now. But I don’t know what they’re building…” 

It isn’t unexpected that the world moved. But the school and its clock tower took up so much space in Rue’s life there, the change is difficult to picture.

“What does it look like? The clock tower?”

Ahiru grimaces. “I don’t know… I haven’t watched it since Fakir wrote my transformation back, and as a duck I couldn’t see very well from far away… And Fakir hates it when I fly off too far, I think he’s scared I’ll fall.” She brightens. “The figures when it strikes the hour are different.”

“Is there a queen?”

She’s not sure why she asks. Maybe she wants a better picture of what she left behind.

Ahiru shakes her head. “I don’t think so… Sorry.”

There’s no reason for Ahiru to be sorry. It has nothing to do with her, or with Rue; it was just a question. Rue tries to say so, but the words stubbornly remain behind her teeth.

“Is there a witch?”

The words are out before she can stop them, and for a breath she remains frozen as Ahiru’s eyebrows shoot up and her mouth falls open.

“No, not at all!”

The denial doesn’t even bring as much comfort as it should, and now Ahiru is watching Rue with a concerned frown. Rue bites her lip.

“Ahiru--”

“Rue-chan?”

Words evade her, pirouetting away like shades evading a dreaming prince. If only there was a way to convey what she wants… 

“Dance with me, Ahiru.”

There are not many roles for witches in ballet, and what few are are usually more pantomime than dance; roles for older dancers, full of theatrics but with little strain on the body. Their place is to incite and trick and curse the hero, and it is the hero’s pain or exhilaration that takes center stage - glorious, wide jumps, tortured arabesques. Witches hover by the side of the scene, watching, lurking, leaving. A Drosselmeyer role.

There are few witches, unless you count Odile. Odile, used by her father to trick the prince Siegfried; Odile, the black swan to Odette’s white swan. For Rue, Odile’s just another name for Kraehe, a role she put on every morning and never got to take off, until Ahiru and Mytho and Fakir broke the story and saved Rue.

It’s Odile Rue intends to show to Ahiru - Rue catches a flash of understanding on Ahiru’s face - but after a couple of steps, Rue finds she’s dancing another part.

_This is the story of a girl thought to be a witch_, she wants to say. _I have come from an outer land to Mytho’s country, but they call him Siegfried here and look upon me with distrust. They had a witch for a queen once, and when they look at me I don’t know if they’re seeing her or seeing Kraehe._

_It’s unfair_, she says. _I am no witch; I only ever played the part of one. _

_I don’t want to be a witch anymore._

She’s not dancing Odile anymore, she realizes. She’s dancing Swanhilda; the popular village girl who one night dances the role of a puppet come to life.

Ahiru dances a reply, their steps interlocking easily into an impromptu pas de deux.

_You’re not a witch. You’re not alone. I may not be Princess Tutu anymore, but I’m your friend. I’m unsure, too, but I will help however I can._

A smile tugs on the corner of Rue’s lips. 

Playfully, she ups the difficulty of their routine; the music - magic, maybe, or the street musician by the corner - changes to fit their dance.

_Well; we have this._

The pas de deux reaches completion to the sound of applause. A small crowd has gathered to watch them, pausing with their shopping bag on the ground, or their hand curled around a hot drink. The woman who sold Ahiru and Rue their cocoa is clapping along with the others, a grin on her face.

Rue’s taken aback, but Ahiru gasps and curtseys, and Rue follows suit. 

She’s almost out of breath, her clothing and shoes sitting strangely on dance moves, but the applause rushes in her ear and drums on her skin like a soft heartbeat. She’s not sure if the warmth she feels is because of it, or the physical exertion.

People start moving again when the two of them straighten and pick up their empty cups to give back to the street vendor, but a few of them smile and make a little bow, and the vendor’s cheer when she tells them she hopes the cocoa was to their taste “and please come back whenever you’d like” stays with her.

The walk back to the castle is quiet. Rue thinks nothing of it, busy with her own thoughts and the feeling that she’s shed a few fears, tonight, like old raven feathers clinging to her.

She doesn’t see it coming when Ahiru asks, out of the blue: “Rue-chan, do you ever think about… about what you want to do?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Ahiru’s frowning.

“Return to the castle, and spend the evening with you.” 

Rue’s not being obtuse on purpose; not exactly. But she’s preoccupied with the past enough that worry of the future might paralyze her entirely. Baby steps. 

Ahiru makes a frustrated noise. “No, I mean I’m glad, I like our evenings too, but I mean... afterward? When I’m home? Are you going to help Mytho?”

“I am the one he’s chosen for his queen,” Rue says. “So yes. Presumably.” 

The cold of the evening is starting to seep past her scarf again. Ahiru’s slowed down since she started talking, but Rue wants to hurry, back to the castle and out of this conversation. 

She forces herself to slow down.

“What about you?”

It’s like a dam has broken; words tumble out of Ahiru, short and raw.

“I don’t know. I think Fakir really likes to write. He grumbles a lot, but he’s so happy when he’s found the right word, or when he can read me a bit and see what I think. I like that, too, but not just that. I think I might want to go back to the Academy, but things have changed so much, and I was never a very good dancer.”

Something in Rue twinges.

“That’s not true,” she snaps. “You’re a wonderful dancer. Your dance has always been bursting with charm and personality, Paola was right to want to dance with you. To see you dancing, it’s like watching _feelings _dance - and that’s what ballet is all about, don’t you know that?"

Ahiru’s mouth forms a small “o” by the end of Rue’s tirade. “B-but my technique…”

“Yes.” Rue nods decisively. “But that’s why you’re never very good at the exercises - you only look like you don’t know what you’re doing, because there’s no meaning behind a series of pliés when there’s no story to it, is there?”

Ahiru ducks her head, her cheeks bitten red with cold. “I think that was just Tutu,” she mumbles. "Tutu was the wonderful dancer."

“It’s not Tutu I’ve been dancing with these days,” Rue snaps back. “Is it?”

“No,” Ahiru admits. She looks cornered, like she doesn’t know how to accept the compliment but is half-tempted to.

“Anyway, your technique’s improving.”

Ahiru perks up. “Really??”

“Hmm. Your balance is getting better,” she explains. “You don’t look like you’re a fouetté away from flailing like a fowl.”

“Back then, I _was_ a fouetté away from flailing like a fowl,” Ahiru whines, letting her head fall. “And from turning _back_ into a fowl!”

“That’s not an excuse for a ballerina,” Rue says, merciless. “If you don’t want to dance, or if you think the Academy is too hard, then don’t go back there. But I’d hate for you to think you’re no good at it.”

It’s not like what Rue knows about Ahiru, to give up because it sounds difficult. It’s not Ahiru at all; Ahiru’s the one who never quits.

“Would _you_ like to come back to the Academy too, Rue-chan?”

“What-- Ahiru, I will be queen here, someday.” _And Mytho’s here_. Rue can no more imagine living away from Mytho than ivy might stand away from an oak. And even if she could - even if she wanted to figure out a way to cut through her love so she could detach herself from him - she’d never want to. The mere idea fills her throat with acid. Losing so much of herself wouldn’t be worth it.

“I know that, Rue-chan! But, isn’t that still a long time away? You could enroll in the Academy and return here for breaks! Mytho too! Couldn’t you?”

It’s not that easy to go from the land of tales to the land of those who write tales; Fakir’s letters implied time and effort. But it’s heartwarming that Ahiru thinks of it and wants them back.

And the picture Ahiru paints…

Rue tucks the idea away for later perusal and tugs her scarf closer around her neck. She does miss dancing with a teacher, and more than that, performing. Dancing on her own is nice, but dancing is meant to be shared with an audience. “Maybe. Let’s hurry back, it’s getting chilly.”

A peeved frown scrunches up Ahiru’s brow. “You know, Rue-chan, you’re very stubborn.”

“That’s what I should be saying,” Rue replies tartly. Ahiru semi-glares at her as she straightens up, which is about as impressive as being glared at by a cupcake, and draws a small sigh from Rue’s lips. “We can still see one another even if you’re in Golden Crown and I’m here. You should re-enroll.”

She doesn’t try to unravel Ahiru’s replying mumble.

Ahiru looks thoughtful all the way back to the castle, and Rue counts that as a victory.

Unfinished business puts Rue on edge. It’s like wearing a tutu whose seams you can feel on the verge of giving out during a performance, and with every move you can feel it shift and imagine the stitches comes loosely undone. 

Here, now - Rue could keep dancing on. 

Or she could call for an intermission.

Rue finds a servant.

He’s not a young man; of an age to have worked in the castle when the fairytale prince was a child; of an age to have known the prince’s witch mother.

“I’d like to plan for a dance, to celebrate the prince’s return. It should take place outdoors,” she says. “I would like to meet my prince’s people properly. Will you help?”

“Milady,” the servant says, dipping lower into a bow, “it would be my pleasure.”

She studies his face, but she can’t find the wariness she knows ought to be there.

“If I am a witch,” Rue says, weighting each word as she would a weapon, “remember this: I brought him home.”

Her voice trembles on the first part, but she doesn’t look away.

She doesn’t say: he hasn’t made me leave.

She doesn’t say: I wouldn’t go.

“It has been long since we thought you--” he interrupts himself, and licks his lips. “We only want the prince to be safe and happy, my lady.”

There’s an air on his face that Rue is more used to associating with Ahiru, of all people; something akin to tentativeness - vulnerable without being weak.

“I am glad,” Rue says. “So do I.”

The servant inclines his head. 

“Then His Majesty is lucky to have you; and so, I believe, are we.” 

The empty ballroom’s stained glass paints Ahiru in pale blue and poppy pink as she executes a variation. 

It hasn’t seen much use, only that first celebratory dance after Siegfried returned. Rue mostly remembers oppressive loneliness sinking to her bones as the night went on and Mytho met his countrymen and -women with grace and friendliness, and Rue killed every conversation she entered, acrid rain on verdant grass. 

But this will change, overwritten by new memories.

“Rue-chan! Did everything go well?”

Ahiru’s smiles, Rue reflects, feel a little less like things Rue is stealing these days, and a little more like something Rue, maybe, is owed. Maybe Rue believes herself Ahiru’s friend at last, her expectations finally catching up to Ahiru’s long-ago promise.

“Fine,” she says. “The weather should hold out, according to the servants, so there’ll be no problem having the dance outside.”

“Did they like the idea?”

Rue hums. “They thought it lovely, though I’ve been given to understand it has been a while since the kitchens haven’t had to plan for an outdoor reception on such a scale.”

“Oh, will that be a problem?”

“I’ve been told they’ll enjoy the challenge.”

Ahiru sighs in relief. It’s so cute, seeing her concern and relief over little things on other people’s behalf. “Good. It is good, then?” Her eyes search Rue’s.

“It couldn’t be better,” Rue confirms. “Shall we?”

Ahiru’s laugh echoes. It’s not a musical laugh - Ahiru’s voice has never stopped sounding like a duck - but Rue cherishes it.

“Rue-chan, dance with me!”

Ahiru extends her hand to her, a ballerina’s gesture; Rue takes her hand, and steps into the dance.


End file.
